Glenn T. Stanton, director of Global Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family, lectures a lot on college campuses about issues of gender and sexuality. He begins by saying, "My primary premise is that humanity exists as male and female; they are different; and they need each other." For this, he's routinely greeted with boos, sarcastic laughter, even hissing. The idea that gender differences are merely a "social construct" is deeply ingrained in academia.

But the actual research in anthropology shows that Gender Studies professors are wrong -- as Stanton explained in an FRC lecture Monday on "The Scientific Objectivity and Universality of Gender Difference." Cross-cultural research shows that certain male-female differences are universal to virtually every human society. It even shows that in more advanced countries -- where, because of greater wealth, men and women have greater freedom to structure their lives as they choose -- gender differences actually grow more pronounced than they are in more primitive societies. And despite politically correct scorn for the "gender binary," no third (or fourth, or fifth) sex has been discovered.

Some of these findings -- and their important implications for parenting -- can be found in Stanton's book, Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity & Femininity, and Monday's informative lecture can be found online.

Tony Perkins' Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.